Anna poet receives awards from national federation
Kathy Lohrum Cotton of Anna received eight poetry awards at the 2022 hybrid convention of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies, NFSPS, hosted in Ohio.
Winners were chosen from more than 6,000 submissions across the United States and from countries including the United Kingdom, Spain, Mexico, Canada, India, Ukraine and Czechia.
Winning poems from the Mildred Vorpahl Baass Remembrance contest and the Al Laster Memorial ekphrastic contest were published in the Encore 2022 Prize Poems anthology.
Cotton’s submissions also took honorable mentions for the Robbie Award, the Poetry Society of Indiana Award, the Mississippi Poetry Society Award, the Ohio Award, the Iowa Poetry Association Award and the Poetry Society of Oklahoma Award.
Cotton’s full-length manuscript, “Even a Beak-Scraped Mountain,” was named as a finalist in the $1,000-prize Barbara Stevens Poetry Manuscript Contest.
Cotton serves on the board of directors of the Illinois State Poetry Society and as facilitator of the ISPS Southern Chapter in Carbondale.
She also is a member of the NFSPS board of directors. She is editor for the national organization’s annual poetry anthology.